15 June

A plug for the Tesla battery, they've done a superb job with it and much of the genius of it is in the in-built AI. For example, if you have an electricity plan that is time-of-use, where you pay different rates for peak, off peak and shoulder, you enter those details into the battery software on your phone. You also enter whatever feed-in tariff you're paid for exporting electricity back to the grid. The battery then calculates, in real-time every day, how to minimise your power bill by a combination of solar and grid charging. It even checks weather forecasts for the coming day to decide whether you'd be better off charging overnight at off-peak rates, if there's a rainy day forecast. It analyses your daily usage patterns to add into these algorithms, with the overall outcome of minimising how much you end up paying for electricity.